I feel like a marathon runner, in the last 5 kms of the race. I’ll make it, but there’s not much left in the tank.

This poem came from a fragment in my notebook, from when I was at Goolwa Beach last year. I saw a group of oystercatchers on the beach, and was amused by their antics. They seemed determined to get as close to the water as possible without getting wet. This resulted in manic dashes up the beach whenever a wave came in.

Today, I woke up tired, cycled 30 kms and ran a 10 km race. So, now feeling more tired, the idea of doing a new poem is pretty daunting. I looked at the NaPoWriMo site, and they suggested an ‘erasure poem’. This involves taking someone else’s poem, preferably a long and famous one, erasing words from it, and thereby creating a new poem.

I sort of did this. I took part 1 of Alan Ginsberg’s “Howl”, extracted lines from it, changed the tense to make it read consistently, then replaced words in each line with a word having an opposite meaning, as far as possible e.g. replace dark with light, replace barefoot with boots etc. Then I shuffled all the lines except my first and last lines, and this is what came out. Definitely experimental, and quite possibly crap.

I’ve been in a few strange pubs in my time. Some of this ‘prose poem’ is based on a recent experience, but it is much embellished with older memories.

Nightmare 4 – Trapped in a Bad Pub

I’m standing outside, looking up at its grubby edifice. A sign creaks in the wind. A bloke stands by the main door, apparently guarding it. Elderly, but stocky. Old suit jacket, sleeves rolled up. As I approach he shouts incoherently, but stands aside. I enter, and he follows me in. A bored barmaid charges me ten dollars for a pint of bad beer. Distorted seventies pop music rings from speakers on the walls. A man with a straw hat sits near the door. He’s inspecting a list of names. He has a panel cut out of the back of his jacket, revealing a tattoo of Alan Ginsberg on his left shoulder-blade. He looks up, seemingly expecting me to give him my name. I do so, but he mumbles and ignores me. There are a dozen other people in the bar. All seem slightly deranged in some way. They mutter to themselves, and throw an occasional glance at me. All the men, except one, are thin armed, wear old waistcoats with the belt at the back hanging loose. The exception is an overweight middle-aged bloke with long, lank, dyed black hair, parted in the middle, black leather fingerless gloves, leather waistcoat, jeans, check shirt hanging from his waist. He goes to a microphone, recites a poem. The poem is riddled with profanities, but it is a good, powerful poem. It moves me. I clap, but nobody else does. A steady succession of people come through the door, well dressed, carrying presents wrapped in gold or silver paper. Each time, they ask the barmaid a question, and she points them to the other bar. Tells them they should have come in another door. A woman goes to the microphone, recites a ten minute version of “Desolation Row”. Everybody claps, except me. At the bar, a man, yellow toothed, grabs my jacket, breathes beer fumes in my face and says “Are you having fun?”. I nod. The bloke who had been guarding the door grooms his hair every five minutes with a plastic yellow comb. Another man goes to the microphone, shouts into it “Shut up you dickhead” to someone collapsed on the floor. A man in a fluorescent vest, carrying a clipboard, enters, talks to the barmaid, looks around, makes detailed notes. He takes out a mobile phone, dials a number, speaks into it: “Yes, that’s right, about twenty of ‘em. Get over here right away and bring backup”.

I’m lucky to live within walking distance of Urrbrae House and its beautiful rose gardens, labyrinth, walking paths and sculptures. Doing ‘poem a day’ is an almost Buddhist experience. It makes you pay attention, to look for ideas, for inspiration. Today, I walked to Urrbrae House (my phonecam pic below) and stood in front of a sculpture which I’ve never really taken much notice of before. Urrbrae is on the Waite campus of the University of Adelaide. The Waite campus is primarily associated with agricultural research. For instance, they develop and test different strains of wheat. So, the particular sculpture I noticed is of Ceres (my phonecam pic above). Ceres is the goddess of agriculture, grain crops, fertility, motherly relationships and of light.

The plaque reads:

Dance into the Light

Ceres the goddess of light rescues her daughter from the underworld. Spring returns to earth.

Figure this one out if you can. This morning I read an Irish poem, “Venio Ex Oriente” by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill translated into English by Michael Hartnett. It’s loosely about a sensuous woman from the Middle East. I’ve taken the tone and, I hope, some of the sensuality of that poem, relocated the subject’s origin to Africa, incorporated some articles I still have from Zimbabwe, Malawi and Swaziland, and then let my subconscious mess around with it. Who know what it’s all about? Maybe you can tell me.

This is an experimental poem, based very, very loosely on my very talented poet friend Jennifer Liston’s “rescue poems”. Only I’ve cheated. I’ve taken the lyrics of two songs, Nick Cave’s “Song of Joy” and the Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s “Next”. I’ve mixed up the lines and sorted them randomly. Then I’ve looked for lines that fit an abab rhyming pattern, combined them into stanzas, and then made various adjustments to get them to make some sort of weird sense. Both songs are very dark, so of course the resulting poem is very dark.